Interactive bitmap images are used for a variety of applications to provide an intuitive, interactive display for a user. Typically, a bitmap image is displayed in a window of a fixed size. Each of several portions of the image is interactive to allow a user to select or configurable settings.
For example, in the field of printers, various setting of a printer may be user configurable, such as the input trays and output bins. A bitmap image of the printer, including the input trays and output bins, is displayed. The image of the input trays and output bins are interactive. To interact with the bitmap image, a user places a moveable pointer or cursor over one of the interactive portions of the bitmap image and selects the interactive portion. Selecting the interactive portion is often accomplished by depressing a button on a computer "mouse". The selected portion is often highlighted to indicate it has been selected.
In order to provide an easy to use interface, the interactive elements of the bitmap image must be displayed at a sufficient size to allow a user to easily select among the various interactive portions of the bitmap image. When the area in which the interactive bitmap image is displayed is large, providing the image at a sufficient size is easily accomplished. However, when the size of the interactive bitmap image is large compared to the size of the display, it becomes more difficult to display the interactive portions of the interactive bitmap display at a sufficient size.
An interactive bitmap images may be given the flexibility to grow as new user configurable components are added to the system represented by the interactive bitmap image. This flexibility allows the interactive bitmap image to become very large. In printer technology, new interactive portions may be added to an interactive bitmap image in a printer driver when new user configurable components are added to a printer system.
Prior solutions for displaying large interactive bitmap images generally fall into three categories: scaling down, truncating, and scrolling. Scaling down is accomplished by displaying the interactive image at a small scale. This becomes less desirable as an interactive bitmap image becomes larger in comparison to the area in which it is to be displayed. As the bitmap image is displayed at smaller scales, the interactive portions of the bitmap image become smaller and more difficult to use.
Truncating involves excluding from the interactive bitmap image a subset of interactive portions of the interactive bitmap that appear outside of the boundaries of the display area. This solution is unsatisfactory since interactive portions of the interactive bitmap image that have been truncated can not be accessed. Those interactive portions of the interactive bitmap image that cannot be accessed are no longer interactive.
Scrolling as conventionally used with interactive bitmap images involves placing scroll bars at the perimeter of the display area of the image so that a user may scroll through an image that is displayed at a full scale. One disadvantage of this solution is that the entire image cannot be viewed at once. Additionally, the use of scroll bars to move about the image is cumbersome.